How Cyberpunk 2077's Map Stacks Up Against The Witcher 3
The release and reception of Cyberpunk 2077 was far from what many fans were expecting. After years of hype and speculation the RPG finally hit the shelves filled with so many bugs that it was taken down from the PlayStation store. Five months after its release, however, some fans are beginning to reassess the title's potential despite its infamous launch.
Leading up to the release of Cyberpunk 2077 there was much speculation about the game's map size. As fans reconsider the game's legacy, here's how Cyberpunk's world actually stacked up in size to CD Projekt Red's last major RPG, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
The world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is impressively large. The game takes place in the Northern Realms in the area surrounding Novigrad, an independent city state. To the west of the mainland is Skellige, a chain of islands that significantly add to the game's size. The mainland in The Witcher 3's retail release is around 72 square kilometers, with Skellige almost double that size, adding an extra 64 square kilometers.
The game's final DLC, Blood and Wine, added a new area. The duchy of Toussaint is around 8 square kilometers. Though the duchy is smaller than most of the areas in the game Beauclair is particularly impressive as the region's capital, and the addition of locations like "the Land of a Thousand Fables" made Blood and Wine's additions to the world particularly hard to forget.
In total, that makes The Witcher 3's world approximately 144 square kilometers in size. This makes it around four times larger than Skyrim, and slightly larger than GTA V's Los Santos.
Comparing the size of game maps is hard for a few reasons. The difference between riding Geralt's horse Roach through Velen and speeding through Night City in a car significantly changes the player's experience of the world's size. Other factor's like vertical height and interiors make some game worlds larger in less noticeable ways. Night City is estimated to be around 75 kilometers in size, nearly half the size of The Witcher 3's world and roughly the size of The Witcher's mainland. This reflects several other comparisons that can be made between the games. Cyberpunk 2077's main quest, for example, is also shorter than The Witcher 3's.
Night City's vertical height and use of interiors does significantly expand the areas players can explore in the game, particularly in its most dense urban areas. Since The Witcher 3 has no skyscrapers to speak of in its medieval-style fantasy setting, it is possible that this helps get the size of Cyberpunk's Night City closer to The Witcher 3's when it comes to explorable areas.
In the lead up to Cyberpunk 2077's release Night City was estimated at around 24 square kilometers with a significant chunk of the map taken up by the ocean. While Cyberpunk 2077's release was not what many fans were expecting, the game's actual map size did prove to be a pleasant surprise.
There are still some major features and updates Cyberpunk 2077 fans are still waiting for despite numerous patches and hotfixes. It's possible that Night City would have been larger given more development time, though few fans would consider Cyberpunk's smaller world size compared to The Witcher 3 to be the game's most pressing issue. If nothing else, Cyberpunk 2077's relatively large world could be good for the Cyberpunk 2077 modding community. Whether or not the game and its world will one day enjoy the same acclaim as The Witcher 3, however, remains to be seen.
Cyberpunk 2077 is out now for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Stadia.
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